Womanly Tales

Soon after expressing my dismay at the British media in not engaging me about the people and key issues – - I realize that I’ve been following the wrong news channel – Guardian online. No, this doesn’t mean the Guardian is bad..it just means that the ‘content’ is really in the print version. I visit the online site religiously and so any grieviances on being let down must surely be laid specifically at the gateway of the online Guardian portal. Though I strongly defend the Eat Well / Nutrition section of the online site – it’s terrific.
Deepan redirected me to the BBC website and I found this tidbit that I loved:
Back to Slad in Gloucestershire, where the local pub is doing its thing for British democracy, by hosting the village’s polling station. Our correspondent Jon Kay is there – upright – and says turnout by Slad’s 200-strong electorate has often hit 100%. Why do you think that might be, he asks.
Now if you’re wondering where Gloucestershire is… here’s an interactive map to learn more about the different constituencies… http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/election2010/results/default.stm
Again courtesy the BBC.

I am an Indian national living in the UK. I did not get to vote in the 2009 General Elections for India. However over the weekend I did vote for the 2010 UK parliamentary elections.
I am a bit embarassed to admit that I voted, because I have so little knowledge about this country or the British political system. Sure I watched Question time every Wednesday when I used to regularly go to the gym during my lunch break — so leaders in government and those in the opposition are familiar faces. Off late I’ve also been watching the Andrew Marr show on Sundays and that can be fairly political even if it is primarily a chat show. Then there’s the odd attention I pay the papers that covers issues that I hope all political parties are aware and concerned about — such as the economy, the economy and the economy…
What did however jog me out of my ignorance-fuelled stupor was the leadership debates – a new phenomenon here in the UK. I watched all three, despite each subsequent round getting more boring and more dull than the previous. I realized that I got more of the ‘leaders’ than the policies – though the structure of the debate did throw up as many policies as possible even if the responses were not as enlightening.
What appals me however despite being as engaged as perhaps the average Brit [if not more] is the complete disconnection I feel to the what is known as the electorate. The people of United Kingdom, their beliefs or values was absent in all of this campaigning. The media companies or ‘media barons’ or ‘media moghuls’ were an instrument of the campaign — and where one would imagine they would champion the causes and concerns of the common ‘Tim’ or ‘Beth’ — they did no such thing. The media companies instead decided on who they were going to support and became an extended arm of the political campaign.
I for one feel quite let down by the media. No thanks to them I was faced with the making up my mind based on largely what I saw and heard at the leadership debates. I didn’t learn about how the economy affects the midlands or why the south is primarily Tory. I didn’t learn about the Scottish & Wales political set up and how it differed from England.
Is this because I live in London? Or is this because the campaign and media strategies are so tuned to the individual — my interests, my needs — that there is absolutely no sense of community or nationhood? Do I care sitting in London what the political leanings in Bath are, for example?
Contrast this with the media coverage of the Indian elections – the BBC hired a train, filled it up with journos from all these different countries and went up and down, left & right of the country telling us what people – ordinary folks aspired from the democratic process. In listening and hearing such stories, I would feel a connection – a deeper bond to a common purpose. I fould find myself opening up to have a conversation and to be flexible to achieve common goals. I found myself relishing my identity as an Indian. I might live in Delhi but I had a real sense of what folks in Madras cared about.
Here in the UK I got nothing of that. The BBC is a public service..paid by me and others who own a television set…and yet we got nothing in return. As it is, I have a very poor understanding of local culture & geography — and one wd think that the single most important event to nationhood (the act of democracy through elections) would celebrate the meaning of democracy and nationhood…. but it wasn’t so. I am as clueless of the rest of Britain as I was before this campaign. I have no idea about what people in Bath, Birmingham, Crawley or Manchester think about this election and why it’s important to them.
And yet how many times have I heard on the radio the reference to the UK system as the ‘mother of democracy’? Is this the fate that we all have in front of us — a state where elections are a systemic change as removed and disconnected from the electorate as ever imaginable. It’s like the Tom Cruise movie where citizens are part human part machine and that’s ‘progress’ and ‘futuristic’. Our needs and requirements have become centered around the individual to such an extreme extent that communities and nationhood mean very little.
This has been my experience and I got to say – in more ways than one, it’s been a sterile experience. Yes, we opted for postal ballots and yes they arrived on time with clear instructions on how to complete them. Yes, I haven’t witnessed any disturbances to my ‘normal’ life as a result of this election — nor have the media channels tuned out other interesting programs and obsessed with elections to the point where I felt my personal space invaded…
And yet, I didn’t have the choice to engage either. I couldn’t watch a Panaroma special on the electoral issues of the South-west or the Midlands… I did have a Labour council candidate ring my door bell and tell me the Tories were ‘just rubbish’ — but I had to cut short that conversation because I had in the midst of cooking breakfast.
Post each debate one thought there would be a panel of ‘experts’ to analyse the results — but no, such thing. All we heard from were American campaign managers who spoke about the process of conducting election debates and the impact thereof — > Uhhhh EXCUSE ME!!!??$&%^%$&$* WHo cares how the leadership debates were structured — we’re here to get a sense of what the issues are. Apart from the politicians and their party ‘teams’ I didn’t get to see any business leader or young enterpreneur or ‘Eastern European’ speak up about what they’d just heard and if it addressed any of the core issues.
A whole new government will be formed and as a participant in this election, I am embarassed to say I’ve learnt nothing about what this country is all about… I have no sense of where it’s headed… I doubt the citizens know either. Each person is catered to as an individual and beyond that family, community, culture are all immaterial. Just as they turn out 18 yr olds and 70 yr olds into universities and homes — human beings are like supermarket commodities on a supply & demand chain… in with the new, out with the old as suited to my demand.
It’s all very sterile and clinical. If we poked at David Cameron would it matter to us that he bleeds? Or would we instead prefer the airbrushed posters that unconsciously comfort us with the knowledge that he’s really a machine — a system of governance that gets the job done?